


Skin-Hunger

by Schemilix



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Blood, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 09:12:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schemilix/pseuds/Schemilix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little assortment box of fiction bites, though some of them might bite back. Mostly written as prompts - a sort of study in love-hate relationships and obsession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin-Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> The first two are gen - after that all but the last three are safe-for-work. Most work by implication rather than direct description, but I ordered it to tuck the less savoury items further towards the back.  
> As usual, pretty strong on the headcanon. Follows the same path as Lion's Roar/Blood and Gold.

**unmasked**

When your mask has become your face - when your face, I mean, deprived of light has some way atrophied - when the mask is removed will we be bloody, or will our pale effigies have outgrown? 

 If I take it off, will I die or be free - both? The mask perhaps is the shadow on my face, perhaps it is - it is - maybe indifference, to be sure, or quiet-speaking, maybe… that is… I am so lost and alone…

 Blood… perhaps the mask is off already. I have been… flayed through I am pierced through only once. Maybe twice… 

 He thinks I am dead or maskless, so pale I am that dark-kept shoot… bloodless and wan… the portal is broken and with it my strength; my head drops. I am unmasked and dying, that I know. Do I think like a lunatic or only more clearly than before? 

 I smell blood - mine or others’ or Ivalice’s - I feel - panic - or comfort - or confusion - maybe pain, melancholy… Because I can smell the incense, a Church-musk, that always came with him. On my clothes… as likely on my skin, like bleeding. 

 I think of Hell as darkness or fire or ice or turbulence… I think of Hell as anything for it does not matter… only that I am unmasked, that too is Hell, I go there - it’s dark - even Ralseph - I am not afraid any more 

 too tired i

 waited for this

 it is where i belong is it not

 sleep

  
  


**Ralseph**

 

 The Stone’s light dwindles, but its powers do not. I can feel it still, warm to the touch but burning in my mind like a beacon, magicks so ancient and terrible they are more real than ‘real’, cannot be called magicks at all.

 Arcane it is, the mind inside that Stone. But there is another that has crept through the gate. It, too, is old - and where I feel it, is is within me, creeping like a cat, I feel it circle and search me, as if scenting for weakness.

 it is within my head and without - physical and not. It - he - he is an itch as much as a thought. I reach up to touch my head… he itches where the scars are, I swear he does.

 As if I have startled this creature I feel it fight. It swells to fill all of me, suddenly hot and spined like a devil, enormous and almost solid. It twists within my muscles, threatening to pull them asunder, fills up my blood like boiling lead. 

 And my mind - no - it pushes, it pushes at the core of me, what little I feel I have left. It digs in taloned feet and pushes, and I push back, with all of my force.

 As I do I can feel my knees buckle, my body curl over to protect itself but it is as if I am not there, wrestling with a beast as yet unnamed, something that has no form but what I give it, which lusts and craves for what which I will not give it.

 The damn pain! A warrior I am, and yet, I am close to screaming - I hear myself hiss, and then I hear my mouth respond with a hiss not like my own, bestial, and I fight harder still. I feel for a second wings that are within my body and cramped into a space of flesh and of the mind, they stretch out and crave substance, material, but I hold it, them back.

 I struggle, and as I do I jolt, as there is a hand on my cheek. For a moment I almost trip in this mental battle against the fiend, surprised as I am to find brown eyes watching mine with a quiet and familiar intensity. The hand on my cheek more intimate than I am accustomed to.

 Vormav pulls my close to his chest and, fighting as I am this demon, and with him as kind as I had never expected. I am off guard. 

 I can hear, distantly, my yelp cut off as he snaps my neck. 

 Falling back - and - Ralseph - Ralseph closes in. I am distant but the pain is not, as the wings burst from the skin of my back, the claws pierce my fingers, I feel the strain of my bones growing and the thing, the - it - has taken me - how dare you - my sanctuary - 

  
  


**conflict**

Devotion - it is a word like love, but not quite. Purer, maybe, than love. But better - stronger - weaker? Does one follow the other?

Perhaps not. Devotion could be said to be like need. A need to need, or be needed. A need to do anything for someone, perhaps to prove you are alive.

You - you know you are a damned fool. That you are knocking your head against circumstance and wondering why you bruise- walking into the den of the lion, knowing he is hungry, knowing that one cannot live while the other survives.

But you do it, perhaps, because you are cold. You do it because you are sick inside and you crave the claws. You do it because being ripped apart is what you desire but your pride and your cowardice would not let you do so.

Maybe you are devoted because you wish to end with purpose.

Or, you think, as you watch the way he moves, perhaps you are devoted because you love him the only way a broken man like you knows how.

  
  


**seed**

Perhaps after you had spent so long creating someone only to lose her, you needed someone to destroy. Maybe it is the limits of a healthy passion you detested, as you could go only skin deep, touch only that which the body gives readily. 

 But I - you do not feel guilt to break me, because I ask it. When you shed my blood I only ask that you cut deeper.

 I am a vessel for everything you would cast off. It is as you say; I have no soul, I am not human. You need not worry about making me cry, as I have no tears. I am empty. A receptacle  All of my emotions are voyeuristic; they were once yours. 

 I want to rip out your spine, break you to pieces. I want to stroke your hair in the morning and kiss your neck at night. Your hatred; your curses; your blood; your wishes and regrets. Perhaps it is that you fear me because I know each of them as kin. Because I stand tall and forgive when you beg for the absolution of punishment. 

 You let me run with every desire. You give me every secret and I drink them as they are mine alone. For I am the one you can possess entirely, inside and out. I would spit on your grave, but I would destroy myself for the name of you.

 

**disappear**

 I have not seen Wodring for over a week, not since he walked to the East Wing with the Scriptures under his arm. 

It was Barich who had first thought to ignore that warning against entering after him, and brought his bloodied body back. 

 Strange to see a man so recently dead keep another from crossing that gate. When finally Wodring leaves that room he is bandaged, not all that skilfully, and the straightness of his spine cannot hide his fatigue. Not from me. He seems thinner, and the lines of his cheeks are harder than before. 

 I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, either, to see that his hair is more shot through with grey in only a week. The forces we are dealing with can do far worse more quickly.

 Pale as he is, though, he looks me in the eye. And yet, something is missing. He runs his hand along his scars and frowns at me, or more, in my direction.

 I find myself thinking - he is small, really. And irretrievable, were he to be lost.

 ”You look half dead, Wodring. Was it you or Barich who so recently returned from the grave?” 

 Instead of responding he only watches me a moment and walks away. Frowning after him, I see Barich tap his own temple. _‘Not all there’_. I’d be worried if Loffrey’s senses didn’t take leave of him as often as they do of late. He has been plagued by fits of irrationality since I’ve known him - upwellings of melancholia, usually, the damned fool. 

 Nonetheless, I follow him, folding my arms. It would not do to have him decide that jumping from the battlements is a good idea.

—-

 I catch up with Loffrey and feel a spasm of discomfort, seeing him sat on the edge of the uppermost wall, throwing stones. There’s hardly a foot between him and a drop that would render him unrecognisable.

 I tell myself it’s his use to us, not any personal feeling, that has me drag him back. My hands are rough and Loffrey winces as his back hits the wall. The wounds are still fresh, then.

 ”Don’t you dare, Wodring.”

 I raise a hand to catch the punch he will doubtless throw at me - but he doesn’t. He only looks away and, absently, he says,

“This is what I wanted. I feel like I’ve been cored. Empty as I am I feel… weightless. Freedom - when you are shackled by nothing, not even your own desires. It’s what I cracked myself trying to achieve and here it is. Written in lines of blood on my chest.”

 ”You’re talking nonsense,” I grumble, then add, “Again.”

 ”Am I? Did Hashmal not change you? Reality has been rendered far from absolute now. Perhaps they were only fever dreams but… I have seen things.”

 He looks at me only when I put a hand on his ravaged chest and push. I ignore his hiss of pain.

 ”That. That is real. Did Zomal take only your soul or did it help itself to your damned sense as well?!” 

 Loffrey laughs, and it is hollow. He pushes my hand away.

 ”It matters only that I do this thing, does it not? I will open your gate. Then, doubtless, I will be free to die,” he says. His honesty is grating. Wodring is supposed to lie through his teeth.

 ”I see.” I grunt, turning away. “Perhaps you will be more useful this way.”

 So - I have lost him, then. Why is it that seeing him, wan as he was, but upright - I felt relieved? But I think he has gone. Whatever it is that has threatened these last two decades to swallow him has succeeded. 

 When he does not respond to me, I walk away. 

—-

 I find myself helping him remove the bandages, though doubtless he could have done so himself. How I got here is a mystery even to me, but there is a force like magnetism at work, and those scars belong to me as much as they are his.

 The scars are deep, still close to red: A line across his heart - marked through with a cross - words, Kildean most like, etched only skin deep. I can see lines where his hands shook and I think of him, bloodstained over that infernal book - alone. When his body gave under it, must he have thought he would die there? And I know that perhaps it is what he wanted - to be devoured.

 I think of that kind of madness, of the sword I used to break my own body. Neither of us were sure that we could be mended. We had nothing left to lose - and perhaps, truly, we never did heal.

 It’s only when Loffrey tilts his head that I notice my hand is over my own scar - the one that still aches, sometimes, with a dull burning. Anything necessary for the life of this body was mended, the rest congealed as a dark knot, Hashmal’s mark upon me. 

 I take the hand away, only to feel a dull shock as his replaces it - the jolt of being touched while unaware, a thrill of vulnerability. Those eyes - the way they see through me, or into me, and how I sometimes want to claw them out for revealing me so. Earlier, they had looked at me openly. Now, they have regained their former opacity. 

 ”Well now,” I say, “it seems I have found you after all.”

  The weight of things left unsaid is suddenly crushing and in the silence Loffrey simply smiles, crookedly. Then,

 ”You won’t rid yourself of me so easily, Tengille. I am here… if you need me.” 

 I place my hand over his. With the threat of that which was left unspoken, that is as much as I can bare to say.

  
  


**attention**

It’s easy to be professional with a cold heart. Cutting or helping as duty saw fit - nothing else. And that was the case, a conscript, a semi-excommunicated priest wielding a godblade he shouldn’t have learned.

When the heart is cold, the blade is steady. That was what Loffrey learned from the world at a young age, and he was as ice, strong as iron inside because of it.

Unfortunately, the heart is not the only player in a Hume’s desires. Seeing this man as he did first, half-blinded with blood, he was off guard on their second meeting.

Fascination - that is a folly of the mind. He grew fond of the black-robed Templar quickly, with his easy manner and his slow way of talking, his measured steps and movements, the trace of a limp. Easy knowing that they could part ways and feel no pain.

The one in green - he was nearly impossible to cope with - a terror of ego and testosterone. Self-contradictory, brimming with intensity. Loffrey found himself wanting to throttle the life out of him and, for it, he couldn’t help but look - watch - analyse. He wanted to understand this man who defied logic, who was intelligent and yet brutish, whose mind and tongue were sharp but who wasted it chasing girls and indulging in logical fallacies.

Loffrey would read his books one night, and lock wills with the Templar’s brown eyes the next day, finding both irritatingly opaque. Much as he refused to be toyed with, he knew he had been drawn into a game.

The desire of the mind - knowledge, understanding. An addiction to logic in the place of passion. Loffrey realised two desires simultaneously: one, to fist his hand in Tengille’s hair and smash his handsome face into the tent-pole; two, that he wanted to touch every inch of him, feel the sword-calloused hands against his skin, through his hair or in his mouth, to whimper with need as he choked against him and felt him in his throat.

But he was a father; Loffrey slammed the book closed and resigned to thinking about those quick-sharp eyes watching him, and that the hand bringing him to crisis was larger and rougher than his own.

  
  


**noise**

Undoubtedly - he has changed. It wasn’t until the incident with Folles and Belias that Loffrey even realised how much a Lucavi could change a Hume. Testament to Vormav’s stubborn will, perhaps, that he retained so much of himself, his own motives.

But he has changed. He stands prouder even than before, he towers not only in his height and size but in his presence, in the essence of the unwordly that lingers around him like a bright shadow. Scion of Dark - Loffrey has read on them, the war from before the creation of the world itself. When Vormav looks at him sometimes, he sees, if not the glint of gold, some sense of _knowing_.

Now those dreams plague him. He sleeps even less, though he understands. Ralseph - he was a lieutenant. But with the sense of the supernatural comes a blood-price.

Before, after all, he never even considered the desire to eat his fellow man. Now it is a lust nearly as strong as the one felt by most men for more acceptable pleasures.

Surely they are beyond human but also more base. Loffrey cannot pretend to dislike that. His blood sings, thrills when Vormav pins him - growls in his ear. He feels it as much as hears it; a deep animal resonance in the chest pressed against his back. His hands held down, the prick of Vormav’s teeth on his flushed neck. He hisses, a low and rough sound, a rasp of pleasure as the edge of the table digs into his skin.

It can barely be called fucking. More like rutting, Vormav snarling as he comes, Loffrey raking his nails across the wood and whining, gasping.

  
  


**torque**

Sometimes it was a matter of lust; Loffrey’s hands are on Vormav only for balance as he moves. With his eyes closed he is near silent but his harsh breaths as he tenses. Vormav only watches him. He knows better than to touch anywhere but his thighs.

Others like crisis - bruised or bloody from each other they would fall from grappling to scratching, from scratching to biting, pulling hair, tasting blood. Hissing, growling, claiming each other. They cry out as if from pain, as if still fighting.

Or punishment - white knuckle grips on leather or metal. Restraint; control; Loffrey takes the blows as if he wants to break apart some day. When finally he yields it is unspoken and unintentional. Vormav’s fingers brush Loffrey’s throat as he tightens the belt around his neck. He shivers.

Most rarely they find some union of all three, between themselves. Something of lust and claiming and punishment, warm-skinned, somehow more naked. Loffrey meets Vormav’s eyes like a challenge; _How dare you look at me, as if I want you to see me that way_ \- and yet. He is reminded of guilt and what he was guilty for, something desperate they won’t or can’t name.

They sleep and the nightmares are easier to cope with; more distant, perhaps, or only more familiar.

  
  


 


End file.
